


got no money but we've got our heart

by anamnesisUnending



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Found Family, Haircuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 14:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19855045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending
Summary: Buddy and Vespa are together again, and for now that's all they need





	got no money but we've got our heart

**Author's Note:**

> I'll stop writing BuddyVespa fic when I'm dead, and even then I'll probably still be ghostwriting it
> 
> title from Anna Sun by Walk The Moon

For a few short days, while Jet drives Juno out into the desert, Buddy and Vespa are together, and the lighthouse is theirs and theirs alone. Buddy closes up the bar, so recently reopened. They lock all doors to the outside, and for a few brief hours their world is one made only of each other. Of apologies, explanations, of words and words and words until words fail and they devote their lips to other tasks, and there is only closeness and distance and so much of all of it.

When that sleepless night has passed, the sun begins to rise, and Vespa, ever superstitious, insists that they return to the top of the lighthouse and watch the world be made new. They know, in that grey dawn, that they have no money, no spaceship, no way out, but they have each other, and there are few happier miseries than making the best of a bad situation with someone you love.

Soon Buddy will reopen the bar, if only until they have the money to find a way out of Cerberus. For now, though, they need the space to rediscover each other, and to rediscover themselves. Vespa cooks herself dinners. After so long under the thumb of someone else, making this routine for herself is simultaneously thrilling and mundane, domestic and novel, all with the morbid, familiar comfort of a knife in her hand, and they sit together while Vespa eats and Buddy just talks. Buddy pores over spaceship models and engines and prices, already laying out plans for new jobs on far away planets, the ember of ambition that has lain dormant for years newly alight in her eyes, and Vespa warms herself by the fire of it. And sometimes Buddy and Vespa just lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling and describing all the places they’ll go when they can finally leave this desert.

Vespa finally starts looking like herself again, not the self she was fifteen years ago, but some new person she is finally safe to become. There are echoes of the past they shared—like that lopsided grin that shines on her face when she laughs, and the way she bites at her lip absentmindedly, and how she makes Buddy remove every spider she finds from the lighthouse, because she’s always been terrified of them but it’s bad luck to kill them—and there are changes from the years they’ve been apart—like the grave and righteous anger behind her eyes when she is too deep in thought, and the way she checks the locks on every door in the lighthouse in the middle of the night, and that odd skill she’s picked up of sewing seemingly impossible pockets into every kind of garment imaginable.

The more she looks like herself, though, the more the things that don’t fit stand out. Her hair, for one thing. Vespa has never liked wearing her hair long, but since she’s been trapped in the Cerberus Province it’s grown wild, a tangle of green brushing down to her shoulders. All the dust and sand haven’t been kind to it, and it’s cut choppily, like she hacked away at it with a knife in a fit of anger, rather than applying any sort of technique or sensibility. Most of the time she keeps it tied back, or hidden underneath hoods and scarves.

Buddy doesn’t bring it up, mostly because how Vespa styles her hair is the last thing she gives a damn about, but she can’t help noticing it. She sees the way Vespa looks away too quickly from her reflection in the mirror, the way she scowls when her hair falls into her face, the way she always seems to tear out a few too many strands while she’s tying it back. They’re showering together one morning, and as Vespa is shampooing her hair, her fingers get caught in the tangles. She tugs violently at the knots, more out of disdain than an actual effort at untangling them, and as her lips curl into a frustrated snarl, Buddy says, “Let me,” and pulls her hands from her hair.

“You don’t have to,” Vespa says, even as her hands drop back to her sides.

“Nonsense,” Buddy says, massaging her fingers over Vespa’s scalp, and Vespa blushes and looks down, but her eyes fall shut and the tension seems to ease from her shoulders as Buddy gently runs her fingers through her hair, freeing strands from their tangles as she goes. It takes time, devoting such tenderness to her task. The water is lukewarm by the time she’s through, but it’s worth it, seeing Vespa’s surprise at the softness of her own hair. Some of it is damaged beyond repair by the harshness of the desert, not to mention the bleach and dye, the color seemingly the only thing she’s bothered to maintain with it, but even so it’s miles better than before.

That will do, for now, Buddy thinks, though another idea crosses her mind later that morning, as Vespa is lacing up the ribboned corset back of her dress. It’s been sitting in a closet gathering dust for years—Jet used to help her into it, before he saved her life and they parted ways for five long years. It’s a trivial thing, bringing a dress out of retirement, but the feeling of Vespa’s hands pulling at the ribbons cascading down her back, and the reminder that they are both back in her life, Vespa and Jet, her dearest love and her closest friend, is almost enough to make her weep with affection. Juno, she hopes, will return to her as well. She has no doubt he’ll make it through his operation alive; he has unfinished business in Hyperion, and despite all evidence to the contrary, she thinks he’s far too stubborn to shuffle off his mortal coil and leave such things unattended. And when all that’s done, well, maybe he’ll remember there’s a family here waiting for him.

Vespa ties off the last ribbon and traces her fingers up the line of Buddy’s spine, then gently over her shoulders as she rises up to plant a kiss at the base of Buddy’s neck, pulling Buddy out of her thoughts with a soft gasp. She turns around and drapes her arms around Vespa’s shoulders, leaning down until their foreheads touch. The future can wait, she thinks with a grin, when she has such pressing concerns in the present.

Hours later, Vespa is sprawled out on the bed flipping through a cookbook, tossing out suggestions at Buddy’s insistence that they get Jet and Juno some sort of gift after they come back from Hanataba’s.

“How about a “welcome home” dinner and a traditional “sorry I stabbed you” cake?” Vespa wonders aloud as Buddy throws open a dusty drawer.

Buddy hums in consideration, then closes the drawer and says, “I’m not sure Juno would quite appreciate the humor in it.”

Vespa frowns and says, “Maybe without the usual frosting knife decorations, then.”

“Frosting flowers instead, definitely,” Buddy agrees.

Vespa nods and marks a couple of recipes for further consideration, then turns her attention fully to Buddy, rifling through desk and dresser drawers in the bedroom that likely haven’t been opened since she left five years ago. She opens another drawer and lets out a laugh of triumph, pulling out an old set of clippers she’d bought when the radiation poisoning had left patches of her hair falling out. She remembers sitting in front of a mirror with tears in her eyes, set on fashioning the bald spots into some kind of half-shaved style that looked at least passably intentional, but in the end she couldn’t bring herself to do it, and had styled the remaining hair to conceal them. She’d tossed the clippers into a drawer, certain that someday she’d need them. And now she does, though thankfully not for the reason she had thought.

“I was wondering,” she says, turning to Vespa. “If you might like to wear your hair a little shorter. No pressure, of course, I just noticed you didn’t seem happy with it.”

Vespa blinks with surprise, her face tinged pinkish again, and she says, “I— I mean I wouldn’t really know how to…” she grabs at her hair, gesturing uncertainly.

“I was also wondering,” Buddy says delicately, “if you might let me cut it for you.”

Vespa bites at her lip in a way that doesn’t quite conceal her grin, and Buddy smiles back and quickly disappears to find a suitable chair and mirror. When everything is properly arranged, Vespa sitting down in front of the mirror and Buddy standing behind her, armed with clippers and shears, Vespa wraps a strand around her finger and asks, “What do you think we should do with it?”

Buddy looks fondly into her eyes in the mirror and gently says, “Anything you want, darling,” and she means that in so many more ways than just this one.

Vespa stares intently at her own reflection, then, hesitantly, makes her request.

Buddy nods, adjusts the setting on the clippers, and cuts away the first swath of hair. It falls to the floor in a long, serpentine lock, and Vespa raises a hand to where it once was, swiping a thumb against the grain of the freshly buzzed hair. She nearly laughs with delight at the feeling of it.

Before long there is a pile of bright green hair gathered at Buddy’s feet, and Vespa sports a sharp new mohawk, the stripe of green down the middle shorter now, shaggy and sideswept. Buddy ruffles the front part down into her eyes, and Vespa laughs and tosses her head so she can see again.

“What do you think?” Buddy asks, enraptured just as Vespa is by the image in the mirror, the shining wonder in Vespa’s dark eyes, the awed smile on her face.

“Shit, that’s… that’s really me,” Vespa says, and laughs a little at herself.

“Good?” Buddy asks.

“Amazing,” Vespa affirms.

Buddy can’t remember the last time she’s seen Vespa so unabashedly happy; it was rare even before they were separated, and she realizes how many of the good memories she must have let slip away in all her mourning and regret. She hopes she’s done with that now. Vespa grabs at Buddy’s comms and pulls her down to get a picture together, and Buddy leans her head against Vespa’s shoulder, smiles for the camera, and they seal away this moment at least to the vault of memory.

“Thank you,” Vespa says softly. “I don’t know how long its been since I’ve felt this much like me.”

“Of course, dearest,” Buddy murmurs, and she doesn’t say it, but she feels the same.


End file.
